


He Speaks to Stars

by thesunkid



Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-26 00:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunkid/pseuds/thesunkid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A street performer on the run stumbles across a sacred bath.  (Ridiculously old.  Read at your own discretion)</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Speaks to Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://thesunkid.tumblr.com/post/23209059839/he-speaks-to-stars-dicktim)

The courtyard glowed white in the dark. Its smooth marble columns flashing like milky stretches of moonlight. Even the drapery, billowing out with the breeze, was of a light airy shade. Dick sighed; the upper echelons of Gotham had pulled out all the stops here. 

He padded his way over to the pool, desperate for a drink. He’d been on the run for several days and he needed a rest. The water was glass smooth, a celestial twin to the starry sky above, and for a moment Dick hesitated; it seemed wrong to just thrust a hand in and shatter the surface. His mother had taught him better than that—stressed an importance in balance. In their line of work balance put coin their purse, food in their bellies, and kept their necks from snapping.

His hand hovered over the surface, delicately tracing the reflected stars. His mother liked stars. After their show, when his father hurried to hide the few coins they’d collected, she’d draw him away from the tents to count the stars and thumb the moon.

“It never changes,” she’d whispered one night, “Here. There. The night is always the same. Embrace it, my Robin. He’s a friend to our people.”

A bittersweet smile twisted his lips as he laid his palm flat against the surface. That was the last time they’d spent together under the stars. The next night their compound had been raided and burned to the ground. He’d been the only one to make it out alive. 

The water lapped at his palm, lukewarm and gentle, but Dick snatched his hand back as a series of ripples flooded over the space where his palm had been. They swarmed and swirled the stars until it was nothing more than a flashing blur. Someone, something was here.

He kept his head down. He knew his place in the kingdom—a dirty street performer, a roamer. He would not risk any more beatings. But neither a strike nor a verbal lashing came, and hesitantly Dick peered through his lashes, only to snap his head back up.

There kneeling in the center of the pool was a figure draped in silver. The wet silk stretched over his skin, outlining a small lithe body. Heat rose in Dick’s face. The robes and the boy’s skin were the same creamy ivory and when he stood—a graceful swanlike motion—droplets of water fell like a shower of stars.

To his relief, the boy hadn’t noticed his presence and everything in his mind was telling him to run, to get out of there, lest he be caught and hanged, but his body wouldn’t move. He remained rooted to the ground, as the boy slowly made his way to the stairs.

The clang of metal and the thud of boots broke the spell and Dick leapt into the shadow of a column as the boy stepped gracefully out of the pool.

“He headed this way! To the Bath of the Oracle!” a guard cried; his voice and footfalls growing louder as they advanced.

The boy’s eyes widened, his gaze jumping around before they locked onto the fast drying footprints in front of Dick’s column.

Dick swore quietly, before reaching out and snatching the boy—The Oracle, The Star Speaker—and pressed him to his chest.

Surrounded by shadow, he froze and stiffened against Dick.

“Shh,” he whispered, running a soothing hand down the boy’s back, “I won’t hurt you. Just need the guys with the spears to leave.”

The Oracle-child nodded slightly, before shoving lightly at Dick’s chest in a frantic attempt to put some distance between them. Dick frowned. He’d just promised him that he wouldn’t hurt him, but the insistent motions continued. Wrapping his arm tighter around the boy’s waist, Dick lifted the other—slowly as to not startle him—and splayed two fingers on his chin, tilting his head up.

His heart skipped. The beginnings of a flush was creeping into the pale hue of his face, and his eyes, bright and blue, darted nervously between Dick and the ground.

“I don’t see him, or the Oracle!”

A shiver ran through the stiff figure in his grasp and Dick pressed him closer.

“Search the temple! His Majesty will not tolerate someone stealing the boy!”

It was a cool embrace, soothing in an oddly acceptable way that Dick attributed to the watery starlight. The dampness of the boy’s robes had started to transfer to his own patchwork tunic with their proximity, and the flimsy silk clung quite fiercely to his—

Oh. That was why.

Dick sprang back, sputtering apologies while the boy frantically adjusted his robes.

“I’m just—” he started, but the words caught in his throat as he took in the slender white form blinking nervously at him. Dark, inky hair that curled in wet feather-like strands against his face and large glowing doe eyes, the boy could have been cut straight from the cosmos. So much so that it was painfully apparent why the gods had chosen him as their voice. “I’ll just go now, okay?”

“Okay,” the boy echoed, soft and breathy.

The hairs on back of his neck prickled, but Dick flashed the boy a smile, before dashing off into the night.


End file.
